August 1st, rings in a special day for West Coast Challengers — It was two years this day that the club was officially established. It was at the Spring Fest 4 event, in March 2009, that our founder first penned out the club and its organizational structure. The idea then, as it is now, is to create a nationwide network of independent Dodge Challenger car clubs — coast to coast.

The next year was spent putting everything together and when things were finally in place, our founder signed our Bylaws and our websites were brought online. An uneventful birth of what seemed like just another car club to some, rivals to others. But West Coast Challengers was different. Our founder’s vision for the club was to bring back some of those things that seemingly had been lost to time with modern day car clubs. As our founder fondly recalls:

I can still remember attending a car show in the late 70’s at Knott’s Berry Farm where the car clubs took over the entire park with vehicles taking up acre after acre to the north and east of the park, and the awards ceremony being held in a packed amphitheater. And the annual car show on the fairways of the Tropicana’s golf course in Las Vegas. Then there were the road rallies of years past which pit a driver and navigator against a route that only included the very basic of directions, such as proceed 1.3 miles and make a left turn to find your next clue. If your odometer wasn’t calculated properly, you could very well go off course, unknowingly, which is where the fun came in. Those are the kind of experiences, now lost to time, that sparked the club’s formation. I simply asked myself, “Why not bring back some of the fun that made those experiences so special?” And here we are, doing just that.

In keeping with that original idea, the club held its first cruise and road rally event this past March, the first road rally for many of our club members, and the event was a huge success and is still being talked about today. Then there was our club photo shoot inside the hangars of the decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station, Tustin. An event not likely to be duplicated as one hangar is slated for demolition and the other set to become a museum. Our club events speak for themselves. They are fun and unique, and often once in a lifetime opportunities, like the club’s private tour aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, an active duty Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carrier. To be on the bridge, sitting in the captain’s chair and looking out onto the flight deck, or to walk on the flight deck itself, are experiences that we have made possible for our club members, experiences that they will not soon forget.

West Coast Challengers is more than just a bunch of people who own similar cars — we are friends who enjoy creating these memories and sharing these experiences together.

Going into our third year, the club events already being tossed around and talked about by club members will create even more great memories that our founder envisioned when he first took pen in hand that fateful day in March 2009.

Thank you to all of our club members for making these past two years so memorable, and to the many car clubs who have supported us through the years.